


Liberation and Appropriation

by Questions3



Series: Nightshade [5]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Actual Thief Bilbo, F/M, Female Bilbo, Young Bilbo Baggins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:12:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Questions3/pseuds/Questions3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let's meet Dwalin</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liberation and Appropriation

**Author's Note:**

> Not even conventional by Took standards *sigh*

            She wasn’t positive this was, strictly speaking, what her mother had in mind for her daughter’s ‘trial by fire’. That didn’t make her retreat as she skulked through shadow and shade into the depths of the mountain, following her unwitting escort to her intended target. It _was_ , however, a curious thought to entertain as she ducked into a slight schism when the largest dwarf she’d ever ran across turned around for the seventh time since she’d began her tail. If she hadn’t actually been stalking the guard she’d think him paranoid. But she supposed, just because one _was_ paranoid didn’t mean someone wasn’t _actually_ stalking you, this scenario being point of fact.

            Every Took who chose to enter into the family business (the business of Liberation and Appropriation as her Uncle Isengrim referred to it) had to pass a final test of their mastery in their arts after their mentor found their skills sufficient to progress. The form said trial would take was left to the Took in question, but it had to demonstrate the full extent of their knowledge. She would have to demonstrate stealth in no small amount, nimbleness, cleverness, her lock picking would have to be demonstrated and she’d need to prove she could move unnoticed. Of course, at the rate this dwarf was turning to find her, she was questioning just how prepared for this task she was.

            He was an interesting specimen to be sure. She didn’t know dwarrow could get that _tall_. He was easily twice her height! Not that she was quite finished growing but by the time she had her last spurt she doubted she’d be more than chin level to the behemoth. Most of the rest of the dwarrow she encountered were a head shorter at least! Added to that he was distinctly lacking in braids, rather his head was shaven on both sides, allowing for a ruff of straight black hair to stick up and ride the center. It connected at the back with the beard that circled his face and met his chest. Truly singular in self-grooming, but even more intimidating, besides his looming height, was his girth. He was a _wall_ of musculature. Bilbo was almost positive running into solid stone at a sprint would hurt less than _walking_ into this dwarf. She was more worried of coming into arms length of the guard than of being skewered by the battleaxes he had strapped to his back. His hands were ornamented with wicked looking braces, only adding iron to the potentially devastating experience that would be.

            To say she was wholly hoping her skills had developed as her mother insisted they had was an understatement. But Belladonna had confidence in her daughter’s talents. After only a year of tutored training she’d given the go ahead for Bilbo to complete the trials. Some mentors also chose their pupil's tasks, but her mother had elected to allow her some freedom in this, arguing it would demonstrate a just as important skill, her judgment, particularly of a situation. As the pair drew closer to Bilbo’s goal, she wasn’t sure her mother had fully thought this through. She knew _she_ hadn’t, but one didn’t ignore opportunities that fell into one's lap.

            “Well now, how the mighty do fall,” the guard’s voice was as expected, rumbling like thunder through the dank cavern, bouncing off the darkened stones of the dungeons. His smile was as sinister as his knuckle-dusters as he stepped into the flickering torchlight. Satisfaction rolled off him in droves as he stared into the cell at the end of the row, and Bilbo’s objective. She stayed hidden in the shadowed hallway but listened closely to the gloating conversation.

            Dwalin was having a _very_ good day. It had started like any other day, a grumbling breakfast with his brother, interrupted by both sons of Fundin being summoned to their King. They were in the middle of negotiations with the some Broadbeams about expanding into the mountain. It was the usual turf dispute that would eventually end in a bloody brawl and drinks later that evening. After washing the blood from his knuckle-dusters he’d went about his daily rounds, checking their new recruits, throwing one uppity Firebeard across the yard when he decided to try his ‘skill’ against an ‘old shrub runner’. It was after lunch that his luck started to change as his nemesis had chosen the entirely wrong pocket to pick. It hadn’t been anything terribly elaborate, but Nori hadn’t anticipated the Elder Broadbeam, who claimed ownership of the mountain they wished to expand into, to be quite so spry. By the time Dwalin had made his way to the commotion in the Center Market he was just in time to see the wizened leader sit on the thief and make the arrest himself. Till this point Dwalin had tried and failed to capture the scourge of Ered Luin, to see the shifty bastard taken so easily was both as demeaning as it was hilarious. He’d decided laughing was the better part of valor this day and had cheerfully escorted the manacled dwarf to his new abode himself. He’d decided one last gloat was his due before that nights rest, and taken the prisoner his dinner himself.

            “Master Guard, if you’d been wantin’ to have dinner with me there were easier ways to go about askin’,” the auburn haired dwarf was rather shabby looking after his bout with what he was deeming his greatest miscalculation to date. If Nori were one to blame his failings on circumstance he’d note there’d been precious little sleep in the last three weeks as his young brother, Ori, had developed an alarming bout of pneumonia. Dori had to work at the shop to maintain his business, so the caring of the lad had fallen hard on Nori’s head. Even with the shop, though, the healer bills had been piling up and Nori’d had to take a few trips out for some of his less than honest work. He’d gotten all of three hours the night before, the most in four days, so he may have underestimated the mark a wee bit. Now he sat there, hair flared, braids a mess, blackened eye glaring up at his entirely too pleased captor. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d ben caught by the guards, but it was the first time he’d been caught without his tools about him, or been put in these heavy manacles and pinned to the bloody stone walls.

            His snipe fell short as Dwalin, bane of his life merely chuckled as he threw the food platter through the bars, food sloshing all over the place. “Well lad, seems to me we’ll be havin’ a number o’ dinners in the long future. It’s no’ advisable to go about stealin’ from tried warriors, no matter the grey in their beards. I'd thought there weren’t a sight I’d like more’n tha one from the square, but this is certainly a paintin’.” His face suddenly sobered as he continued with his new topic, “Look at ya. Wha’? Diya think this is helpin’ your brothers? The young ‘un alone at home while his brotha is off being a vagrant, the other breakin’ his back to make an honest wage. Then there’s you draggin’ their name through the mud with your nonsense.”

            Nori remained resolutely silent as he glared down at the spilt tray, not acknowledging the captain. Dwalin just sighed as he rubbed his hand through his Mohawk. “I pray ta Mahal you find the way back, but till then you’ve these walls to aid your introspection.” With his words falling on deaf ears, the guard was gone.

            Thoughts of his brothers had the thief silent and sullen, eyes falling shut as his head fell to his chest. He didn’t hear the cell clink open, and didn’t realize he wasn’t quite alone till she cleared her throat, hesitantly, from the open door. Head jerking up Nori couldn’t help the grin that lit his face and brought life back to his hazel eyes. There was his tiny thief, in her black garb, leaning against the bars in practiced nonchalance. “Well now, you’re a sight for sore eyes little one,” was his soft whisper as his eyes traveled over the bounty for the first time in a good many months. He’d seen the lass and that older one running the mountain a few times since their first meeting, not gotten half as close as he’d have liked though. There was something compelling about the plump little thing in her tight black leggings, black suede boots and black hooded tunic, strapped to her torso by the corset holsters she carted her black handled blades. She was dressed to blend but stood in sharp relief as a fixture in his underhanded world. It was the sweetness in her that showed through that twitchy little mouth, her smile was bright and easy, and honest in its vitality and joy. It drew him in; he wanted it as much as he’d wanted anything else, more so. But anytime he got close enough to take it, he’d back down, sometimes was thrown down, unwilling to taint that glowing light with his indecency. Didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the sputtering and twitching he seemed to invoke in someone so usually composed.

            After the small fit he’d sent her into Bilbo sighed in exasperation as she strode over and began to make quick work of the manacles. Mind set firmly on her mission she didn’t see the surprise at how easily her nimble fingers divested him of dwarvish iron. When she went to work on the next he shifted, began to whisper at her when something caught his eye. At the last minute he tossed the lass away with his freed arm and kicked out at the falling hammer, “Damnit! Run lass!”

            Turning in shock, how could someone so _huge_ be so _silent_ , Bilbo watched as she was stalked back into the corner of the cell. She spared a glance for Nori just to see him frantically picking up where she’d left off on the last manacle. Her attention was drawn back to the guard as he made another swipe at her, causing her to dance back and slam into the damp wall at her back. “Now what ‘ave we here. Did ya think I wouldn’t feel ya little friend following me? What did you think, thief? I’d leave the likes of you unchecked? Now you’ve dragged this wee bairn into this, no beard to speak of. She’ll rot in the cell next ta ya for her troubles.”

            When Dwalin made to grab the lass by the hood, Bilbo decided this was the part of her task she’d have to begin proving her agility. With barely a glance back she grabbed the arm descending down on her, used the height difference for leverage as she ran up the wall and bounced over the beast’s head. Rolling to Nori’s side she was snatched up by the newly freed thief and the pair ran out the cell, slamming it shut behind them. Dwalin’s near deafening calls to arm chased them from the dungeons through the mountain. More guards clambered after them, shouting and causing such a din it was a wonder any of them could think let alone understand their mission. But understood they did and they gave a merry chase. There was a number of corridors Bilbo thought they’d had it, only to find Nori had opened some hidden fissure or other. At one point he’d opened some secret door sealed flush to the wall with some grumbled words in that dwarfish tongue of theirs. It led them out into the night and the pair practically flew, not stopping till they’d reached the ledge of the mountain that opened to the residential area that housed the dwarrow Thief’s Guild.

            Bilbo had been following her companion for quite a time when they finally stopped in an alley outside the Copper Ingot, a bar her mother had only ever taken her once, when they’d been meeting an old colleague for a job he’d wanted handled discreetly. She suddenly found herself in a growingly familiar position, pushed against a wall with a lithe body pressed against her front. “I hadn’t expected to see you again so soon little petal, and definitely not without that vulture following you around,” the timber was spoken softly, moist breath whispering across her pointed ear through her hood. Even with the covering it still sent shocks of pleasure through her as she tried to maintain her passive demeanor.

            Staring up into over heated, mutable eyes, distinctly ignoring the traveling hands as they skimmed the sides of her suddenly _entirely_ too tight tunic and holsters, she smirked, though it wavered. She mentally cursed her traitorous body as her voice came out breathier than she’d ever wanted it to, “Every apprentice has to strike out on their own at some point.” She should have known better than to choose _this_ as her task. Too much sentiment involved, and a not so tiny crush that had landed her in this, not entirely undesirable, place.

            Mutable eyes shifted to a greener color in the dark as the dwarf thief somehow found more space to steal from her, “Ah, so I’m the prize of this little foray into honest thievery, hmm? I’ve been a mark, captive, fugitive, and a disgrace but never the purse. So what does the baby thief intend to do with her plunder?” nimble fingers danced over a silken cheek right before chapped lips crashed down for their own plundering.

            The intense sacking of her mouth surprised Bilbo but she quickly found her feet as she tried to fight the opportunistic heathen off her. Feeling the tensing in his rescuer and the squirming in something less than pleasure, Nori gentled his caress, coaxing the tightened mouth under his own, hands taking on an easing touch as they wound round the lass’s back. It didn’t take long before the resistance turned into trembling curiosity, rigidity becoming pliant and relaxed against his own body. He smiled as he recognized the willingness in the inexperienced return of his ministrations. Then he groaned as those nimble hands that had released him just moments ago trapped him, dove into his mussed hair and dragged him closer as a tiny tongue peaked out and dove in to dance with his own when he gapped in shock.

            He had one hand grasping at a thigh as he wrapped her leg around his waist, his other reaching for the blasted cloth sealing her face from him, gasping into her mouth as the tiny mews she made drove him further and further into madness, when he was hit by a bucket of cold water. Literally _hit_ upside the head with the blasted bucket, knocking him sideways, right before the thing was upended on his head and he was left drenched and shivering, for all the wrong reasons, in the night. He sighed as he turned, “Good evening Madame Vulture. I wasn’t lookin’ to exactly bathe this eve but the thought was kind nonetheless.”

            The older lass stood in front of him with his wee savior standing behind her, the wee one's lips plumped and red from their previous occupation. He’d never felt more thwarted, not even in that damned dungeon, then he did right at that moment. Staring as he was, he barely dodged the swinging bucket the second time around, with a muttered curse he didn’t think any proper lass had ever been wont to utter the older twin turned to her charge, “So this is your chosen task? I’ll give he’s a trial but hardly appropriate.”

            Bilbo smirked at her mother, “Well, now, what exactly _is_ proper about all this then mama?”

            He’d suspected the pair to be related, but to hear it spoken so clearly was the final shock to a worn down system. Nori dropped to the floor of the small alley. How the hell could that one be her mother?! She looked no older than his Petal for Mahal’s sake. What were they?

            He’d apparently spoken the last aloud, “We’re family Master Dwarf, and this is family business. Now this is the second time I’ve caught you with your hands in places they have no place being for at least a decade more. Even then it wouldn’t be proper but at least it won’t be amoral.” Looking around to her daughter Belladonna took in the flushed face, but read no fear in the lines of her little one, merely the contriteness she saw in her when she’d eaten the last of the pumpkin pie. Her own mouth pursed in amused resignation as she turned to the lad at their feet, and, taking pity, she extended a hand, “Mayhap we should reserve our conversation for a time you don’t look quite so done in lad. Come now, lets get you home. Now, where would it be?”

            Tired he may be but he was never stupid. Taking the hand up Nori shook his head, “No offence meant Madame Mother Vulture but I’ve not taken quite that much leave of my senses to lead strangers of our kind to my doors.”

            Her smirk became a smile at that, showing off the dimples her husband had fallen in love with as she nodded, “Of course. But, if you don’t mind, the moniker is Nightshade.” Before the dwarf could ask what the hell was going on, and what she’d meant by ‘chosen task’ the lassies had taken off. It was a testament to his exhausted state he didn’t give chase and, instead, found his way to one of his boltholes. He couldn’t very well go home tonight, not with Dwalin after his blood. But he’d sleep easy and wake laughing thinking about the Guard’s expression when the jail had locked shut in his own face.


End file.
